Gang slaughters 41 women ‘in full view of guards’, country’s president says
At least 41 women have been killed during a riot at a women’s prison in Honduras in what authorities called a gang-led attack.
Most of the women killed at the the Centro Femenino de Adaptacion Social (Cefas), a women’s penitentiary in the town of Tamara, were burned to death, while others were shot, said Yuri Mora, spokesperson for the public prosecutor’s office. At least seven prisoners were being treated in hospital.
President Xiomara Castro said Tuesday’s riot at the prison, about 12 miles from the capital city Tegucigalpa, had been planned by “maras” (street gangs) with guards’ knowledge.
“Shocked by the monstrous murder of women in Cefas, planned by gangs in full view of security authorities,” she tweeted.
She pledged to take “drastic measures”, but did not explain how inmates identified as members of the Barrio 18 gang were able to get guns and machetes into the prison.
Footage from inside the facility appeared to show several guns and a heap of machetes and other bladed weapons that were found after the riot.
Sandra Rodríguez Vargas, the assistant commissioner for Honduras’ prison system, said that at around 8am on Tuesday the attackers “removed” guards at the facility, none of whom appeared to have been injured. They then opened the gates to an adjoining cell block and began massacring the women there, before setting the prison ward on fire.
Some of the inmates had reportedly complained that they were being threatened by gang members before the attack. Johanna Paola Soriano Euceda, whose mother and sister were being held at the prison awaiting trial on drug trafficking charges, had told her on Sunday that the Barrio 18 members were “out of control”.
“They were fighting with them all the time,” she told the Associated Press. “That was the last time we talked.”
Another woman, who did not want to be named, told the news agency that her friend who was being held in the ill-fated cell block on robbery charges had told her on Sunday that Barrio 18 members had threatened to kill prisoners “if they didn’t turn over a relative”.
Dozens of anxious, angry relatives gathered outside the rural prison as they waited for news.
“We are here dying of anguish, of pain. We don’t have any information,” said Salomón García, whose daughter is an inmate at the facility.
Azucena Martinez, whose daughter was also being held at the prison, said: “There are a lot of dead – 41 already. We don’t know if our relatives are also in there, dead.”
Officials described the killings as a “terrorist act” but also acknowledged that gangs essentially had ruled some parts of the prison.
Julissa Villanueva, head of the prison system, suggested the riot started because of recent attempts by authorities to crack down on illicit activity inside the prison, and called Tuesday’s violence a reaction to moves the government is taking against organised crime.
Honduras has a history of deadly incidents in prisons that are often overcrowded. More than 900 prisoners have died in the last 20 years, according to Honduran newspaper La Prensa, while El Heraldo reported that the women’s prison in Tamara has a capacity to house 500 prisoners, but official data showed more than 900 were being held there.
Additional reporting by agencies
